Wolf Bite (8 page)

“So?” Challenge dripped off the word.

No, she really didn’t want to talk about the pack. “An observation.” Then because he couldn’t help himself, he stroked his hand down her ponytail.

Up to her elbows in soapy water, she paused and flicked soap at him. “Oh, Lord no. You will not start
that
again.”

He laughed. Tugging her ponytail had become something of a sport for him when they were far younger. She scrubbed each plate diligently. In true Huston family tradition, one made the meal, the others cleaned up. Setting the wine glass where she could reach it, he rinsed off the plates she’d washed and stacked them in the dishwasher.

Working together, they were soon done. Drinks in hand, they headed to the living room. Lightning flashed in the distance and Alexis walked over to unlock the balcony door.

“Turn off the light.” She motioned to the wall switch and he flipped it obediently. The room darkened, but nothing in the city resembled true darkness. Outside, the air was electric with a storm rolling in, a fat black thunderhead that charged the heavens. Cradling her wine glass, she stared up at the sky with an expression that verged on rapture.

Awed, he watched her, not the weather. “You used to be afraid of thunderstorms.”

“I used to be a lot of things,” she said softly. “But I grew up.”

“I noticed.”

 Though her gaze remained on the sky, the scent of her arousal wreathed the air around him and he smiled. Lexi could pretend to be angry or dismissive all she liked, she still wanted him.

“That’s what I mean,” she said softly. “I want a human life where my every emotion isn’t on twenty-four hour display.”

“You enjoyed my compliment,” he said. “I wanted you to enjoy. I wanted you to know I want you. What’s so wrong with that?”

When she turned to lean sideways against the rail, he put his hand on the bar. The building was secure and constructed of fine materials, but while he could survive a fifteen-story drop, she could not. “Why did you leave, Mason?”

“Answering a question with a question is deflection.” His attempt at humor didn’t sway her.

“Pointing it out is deflecting, too.”

“Why don’t you want me to know you’re aroused? That the thought of me touching you is appealing.” Her pulse accelerated at his question, but her eyes narrowed and thunder rumbled as she scowled.

Nature scored her temper and he laughed. The sound came from his belly and it shed years of isolation and distance in its wake. Though she fought against it, the corners of her mouth began to twitch until finally Lexi chuckled.

“Having
you
know I’m interested is one thing,” she said, sobering. “Having everyone else know? Not so much.”

If everyone else knew, they’d know not to touch what was his. Mason shrugged. It was a win-win. Not that she could be his, but if they were home—in another time and another place. “Since it is only me,” he appealed to her levity once more. “Feel free to be as aroused as you like. I will continued to savor the taste of you while I imagined what it will be lick—”

She didn’t let him finish the sentence, clapping her hand over his mouth. With a smile, he stroked his tongue along her palm then swirled it at the center. The musk of her filled the humid air around him and her pupils dilated. “You’re terrible.”

For her?
Yes
. Keeping her hand hostage, he clasped it and moved it down to his chest. “You smell wonderful. Almost as wonderful as you taste.” How far would she let him go?

Not far, apparently, because she rolled her eyes. “Dad didn’t want me to move so far away, but I picked Dallas for the distance…and the storms.”

So she would rather talk about the subject she didn’t want to discuss earlier than admit to the sensuality between them. Stroking his thumb along the back of her hand, he tried not laugh. Lexi would lead him a merry chase. A warning bell went off, one he should pay attention to, but he wanted to concentrate on her—especially if she revealed more details about her life.

“They have some great schools here and, to compromise, I let Dad recommend me to a friend of his. I work at his law office four days a week and go to school in the evenings. If I have a morning class, Carter doesn’t mind. Frankly, I think I could show up every two weeks for a paycheck and nothing else, and he wouldn’t comment or care.” That fact didn’t sit well with her. No, it wouldn’t sit well with him either.

“I prefer to earn my way. My first year on the outside, I found plenty of work in the summer. They are always building something somewhere. But when the bad weather rolled in…” Lightning forked the sky as though giving him additional emphasis. “Work could be spotty. I had one foreman who tried to pay me to stay on through the winter. He would have paid my rental fees and a food allowance, just to be certain I would be there come spring.”

“But you didn’t want to owe him.” Lexi summed it up in simple terms without an ounce of judgment. “I wish I could do that with Carter.”

No dislike colored her words. “Why don’t you?”

She finished the last of her wine and held the glass out to him. “That answer needs more liquid courage.”

Mason frowned.

“It’s not that bad, but I’m enjoying being out here with you, the weather and the wine.”

Enjoying that she ranked him higher than either the weather or the wine, he accepted her empty glass and motioned her toward the chairs. Only when she sat did he leave her. When he returned, he brought the wine bottle with him.

Despite her earlier words, she didn’t take another drink, but swirled it around the glass. “Neither Mom nor Dad wanted me to move. In fact, I tried to leave for two years after I finished high school. I started with the community colleges there, but then went further and further away to take classes. Dad figured out what I was doing right away and found reasons why I couldn’t take those classes.” Her sigh sounded trapped between aggrieved and amused. “When I discovered what he was doing, I stopped telling him about the classes, then I’d find that my schedule had been changed or the classes were full. Once, my tuition check went to the wrong department and, by the time they sorted it out, the enrollment time period ended. But I knew it was Dad. He was playing games and it was really pissing me off.”

Her face scrunched on the last and Mason schooled his features to keep from laughing at her again. As adorable as she was, he didn’t think she’d appreciate the humor. Ryan might have been playing dominance games with her, but he’d also been keeping her close to home where he could watch over and protect her. When Mason said as much, his darling Lexi growled at him.

“Yes, more wolf shit. I got that. So I signed up for some distance courses on the computer. They made him really happy until I applied for an internship in Chicago.” That, Mason realized, had been when her rebellion crystalized. “Dad was furious and tried to reason with me, but I had Me-maw on my side and I’d lived in Chicago before. It’s only a four-hour train ride, a few hours more by bus. It was plenty close, but also far away. I had to practically swear in blood that I would stay in touch, follow his rules, even after all that, he insisted on renting my apartment, but I got to go.”

She’d won a round, but she’d conceded some to do it. Pride filled her expression.

“Did you enjoy the internship?”

“No.” Alexis shook her head. “I hated every second of it, boring drivel, but at the same time, I was free. I could go home and be in a bad mood or wake up and dance around in my underwear—and no one knew. No one judged. Heaven and hell in one city package.”

“So what happened when you went home?” He prompted, deeply entrenched in every detail.

A drop of rain spattered against his face and he rose, scooping her—wine glass and all—into his arms before he stepped inside. He had the door closed before the deluge fell and Lexi studied him with an unreadable expression, one he couldn’t decipher even by her scent which remained aroused and intrinsically her. “You really can’t help it, can you?”

“You would have gotten wet.” He wouldn’t apologize for bringing her inside and he didn’t think she wanted him to.

Her cheeks dimpled. “I am already soaking wet.” The invitation to his senses dropped a match in his blood. She made no move to leave his arms. Instead, she reached to put her wine glass down while looking at him from beneath lowered lashes. “If you break my bed tonight, you are paying for a new one.”

“Deal.” And he slammed his mouth down on hers.

Mason broke the headboard and sliced through the mattress. He was also there when she woke in the morning, rousing her in a slow, devastating sensual assault that left her boneless as well as breathless. Their day together—bed shopping included—reminded her of all the fun times they’d spent as teens—though they’d hardly shopped then. The familiarity lay in the ease with which they fell into familiar routines and how comfortable he was to be around.

The bed he purchased included a hardened steel frame and it had to weigh a ton. But he handled the delivery, loading it in his truck rather than allowing others into her place. He also replaced the doorknob he’d broken and the faceplate. After he’d put the new bed together, he enticed her into christening it. Spent and drifting, she sprawled atop him, her cheek pressed to his shoulder. White feathers floated down around them and she began to laugh. “Well, the bed survived, but you managed to kill my last pillow.”

“What is your fascination with birds?” The rumble of his voice accompanied by his heartbeat had her curling her toes. She wanted to make love to him all over again, which didn’t seem possible—she could barely move.

“I like soft things,” she smiled, then pressed a kiss to his chest. No, she definitely didn’t want to move. “And hard ones. If I have to pick a pillow, then I pick you.”

Tension coiled where he had been relaxed before, but she pretended not to notice. They’d enjoyed two days since he charged back into her life, but despite his actions, she couldn’t shake the feeling that he remained poised to charge back out. “Mason?”

“Hmm?” He trailed his fingers up and down her spine. Her muscles were liquid under his light touch.

“Tell me what it means to be a Lone Wolf.” He’d used that term a few times, even explained some of it, but she didn’t understand. She couldn’t wrap her mind around the concept, not when it flew in the face of everything she’d always known about the wolves.

Silence met her question, but he continued to stroke her spine and she closed her eyes. One of the hardest parts of dealing with a dominant was they decided the right time to share information. If he didn’t want to tell her, he wouldn’t. The assumption she would understand the label hadn’t been an unfair one. She’d grown up surrounded by pack politics and games, but while everyone else always knew what was happening, her playbook seemed to have huge chunks redacted from the contents.

“How much of pack structure do you understand?” The question surprised her and, more, it pleased her.

“The U.S. has five packs of wolves. Every pack has an Alpha, he—or she…” She added the second as an afterthought because a female Alpha ruled Delta Crescent pack. “Is the final arbiter of all decisions. Their word is law, but they are also tasked with upholding pack law. Every pack has dominants.” She tried to remember the way it had been phrased in school. “Dominants determine rank amongst themselves. Even one with a smidgeon more dominance than another can pull rank. Second to the Alpha are the Hunters. They are both in and out of the pack hierarchy, but they aren’t lieutenants so much as an extension of the Alpha’s will. They are spread throughout a pack’s territory to protect it from within and without.” There were other ranks and types: Betas, Omegas, Gammas, and Healers.

Mason loosened her ponytail and stroked his fingers through the strands. The light tugs at the end of each stroke were curiously soothing.

“Family groups are important within pack structure, with the dominant in each family taking the role of matriarch or patriarch.” Not Alpha, but alpha of their family. The role didn’t mean masculine authority and wasn’t limited to that of a mated pair. Me-Maw ruled her family and her mate died many years before. That she had outlived him was something of wonder. “Oh, and there are Enforcers, outside of all pack structures who do not answer to any one Alpha. They’re like the Feds to the Hunters local cops.”

She liked that analogy, because it fit.

“So you understand the basic foundation,” he said, contemplation in his tone. “Wolves are, by our nature, social.”

Yes, she was very well aware of that fact.

“Even humans have a social pecking order, wolves are just a little more direct about it. The structure of pack allows us to be together, to offer protection for the vulnerable amongst us and to maintain our laws. We need structure, particularly among the dominants.” None of this was news to her, but Mason’s husky voice taking on an almost teaching cadence? That was kind of sexy.

“The rule of an Alpha is for life. He or she may only be replaced in one of two ways. Natural selection or surrender.”

“Natural selection? Death?” She couldn’t suppress her shiver and Mason caught a sheet to drag up and wrap around her.

“Yes, natural or violent.”

“Someone challenges the Alpha. They win, they become Alpha.”

“Yes.” Mason nodded. “If they lose, they die. To challenge means one feels ready to lead or at least that you will not follow any longer. An Alpha cannot afford to leave a challenger alive.” Darkness crowded in his words. His father had challenged Toman.

Toman had killed him.

Rubbing her cheek against him in sympathy, she whispered, “What if the Alpha dies from natural causes?”

Another long pause. “That has only happened once in recent history and it’s a time of deep social unrest within the pack. When an Alpha is beloved, even when he is in failing health, those who are strongest around him will band together to keep him safe.” His voice softened further. “It matters little if he doesn’t possess the physical capabilities of protecting them any longer, his wisdom and love are for the good of the whole pack, so those who are strong will not challenge his leadership. When he passes, the dominants will reassert themselves. Those who contend for leadership will fight—not always to the death, but sometimes. The last one standing, the one who engenders the most loyalty, he or she will become Alpha.”